> that wasn't really an issue as food production has been pretty much restored during 192x "New Economical Policies" Fair point; I meant that many efforts were

> that wasn't really an issue as food production has been pretty much restored during 192x "New Economical Policies" Fair point; I meant that many efforts were devoted to the industrialization of the country, depriving the agricultural sectors from those – especially regarding resources allocation in brainpower and machinery. > in many senses that was exactly the consequences of the transfer of control from successful private farmers ("kulaks") to collective farms I disagree; it seems to me it was the consequences of Stalin's purges profiling at the horizon, and noone – especially among the low-rankers of the party hierarchy – wanting to find themselves on the wrong side of a Nagant for announcing a failure to fill the quotas. > as if "bad weather" magically disappeared :) Bad weather is a problem if (i), as you mentioned, the whole incentives for production are screwed up, and (ii) the agricultural infrastructure of the country is miles behind the state of the art. Imperial Russia was still relying mostly on human work for agricultural tasks in the 1910's, and 1930's USSR was miles behind 1950's-1980's USSR w.r.t. agronomical methods & knowledge, equipment, irrigation, mechanization, etc. So if bad weather would only be an inconvenience more recent USSR, it would become a compounding factor for a generalized famine in 1932.